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At the centre of the new season of 24 is a
seemingly content, comfortable, affluent American family. Mum, dad,
diligent high-school son and his picture-perfect girlfriend. Nice
house. Late-model car in the driveway. A postcard for the American
Dream scrapbook.

They're also Muslim, with links to a shady terrorist cell.

As anyone familiar with 24 will immediately know, it's
not the first time the show has played the Middle East terrorist
card, anchored its far-fetched superhero story in the domestic
routines of upper middle-class suburbia or milked the anxieties of
post-September 11 America.

Unsurprisingly, perhaps, when the current season screened in
America, Muslim groups complained that the show perpetuated
dangerous stereotypes. The Fox Network responded by screening
announcements reminding viewers that most American-Muslims
denounced terrorism.

In Australia, with the premiere falling in the wake of the
London bombings, an executive member of the Islamic Council of
Victoria said the episode's timing was unfortunate. But Channel
Seven said it had no intention of shelving the new series, which
was "challenging" and reflected "the times in which we live".

Executive producer Joel Surnow was more strident. "I don't think
this world deserves political correctness right now," he told
Entertainment Weekly. "Muslims are (the magazine's
emphasis) the terrorists right now."

But talk to Shohreh Aghdashloo, who plays the Araz family's
steely matriarch, Dina, and a more tempered viewpoint emerges. Our
conversation came before the London killings.

"The truth of the matter is we are living in the post-9/11 era
and we can't help it. The more dedicated and responsible writers,
actors, directors are obviously inspired by their own environment
and their own society," says the husky-voiced Iranian-American best
known to viewers in this country for her Oscar-nominated role in
2003's House of Sand and Fog.

Furthermore, it would be wrong to make simple assumptions about
Dina Araz, "mother, wife and possibly a terrorist", she says,
hinting at the ambiguous, ever-shifting politics that are the
show's lifeblood, and the twists and turns that make 24's sinewy
plots the best guessing-game in town.

Aghdashloo confesses that she hadn't heard of the show when the
producers approached her with the role. She thought they had asked
her to phone them back with an answer in 24 hours. After watching
episodes from previous seasons she was impressed. Still, she was
reluctant to play the part.

Aghdashloo arrived in America in 1979. An established actress in
her native Iran, she fled, at 26, with the arrival of the Islamic
revolution in 1979. Her name was banned in Iran's media and for
years she was forbidden to return.

In America she found herself an agent, who warned her to expect
little. "He sent me to auditions but soon I realised that there is
no place for me here. The roles were a line here, a line there, the
facade of a terrorist, the facade of a battered woman from the
Middle East. They weren't fully dimensional characters, so in 1996
I called my agent and said, 'Let's not ruin our relationship over
these auditions'."

She busied herself in the Farsi-language theatre company she had
established with her husband, Iranian playwright-actor Houshang
Touzie.

When the producers of House of Sand and Fog approached
Aghdashloo a few years ago, she didn't even have an agent.

"With House of Sand and Fog, not only the industry but
audiences in the US saw my work, liked it I guess, because I
started to receive more and more screenplays and theatre plays and
television. You can imagine, my whole life changed; a hundred times
better, obviously. I turned into what I had wished for, a working
actress in the main industry."

Yet as Aghdashloo sees it, it is precisely as a consequence of
the post-September 11 climate that her moment has come. "We have to
realise that all these stories, all these screenplays I have been
involved in, are inspired by our environment and the era we are
living in . . . That's why there are more roles for people like
myself.

"In the US, the main industry is turning more and more
international, and in the projects I'm receiving there are Middle
Eastern roles everywhere. This is a reflection of our society now.
People are telling stories in which Middle Eastern people are also
a part. When people ask me, 'Aren't you playing a stereotype?'
first I say there is no type that I can be a stereo of and,
secondly, when stories are inspired by the reality of the day it's
no longer a stereotype. This is the story of our society."

The specific challenge of 24's dramatic concept and the
politics that are at the show's core ultimately convinced
Aghdashloo to accept the part.

The challenges, she says, are many, from not knowing where her
character is headed - typically, the show's writers are only one
episode ahead of the one they are shooting - to maintaining
continuity. Eight months of filming is compressed into a mere 24
hours in the dramatic life of the characters.

One of the keys to playing her character was to not judge her,
she says. "If I have already made up my mind what kind of a woman I
am, then in the next episode I would be in trouble. What I decided
to do was use lots of (Russian drama theorist) Stanislavski
(method) . . . which is about living with the reality of the day.
Somehow I tried to live with the idea that I'm living with the
reality of today, and don't know if I'm going to be killed
tomorrow. Who knows? I go out, get in a car, am caught in an
accident and die. So I decided to play it like that."

Aghdashloo has few reservations about using her profile to
further causes she champions. She recalls that on her first Sunday
at London's Hyde Park Corner an elderly gentleman whispered in her
ear that she would need a box to stand on. "I realised that if you
take a box with you, you can stand up and say whatever you want.
From then I have been an activist. I give political commentaries on
Channel 18 here in LA . . . talking about injustices in Iran, about
human rights, children's rights, women's rights.

"My cause is peace in the world. But I'm not a child, I'm past
50, I know we cannot make big changes like that. But I've learned
something else as well, that we can bring about changes . . . But
we have to wait for the last person on earth to become
educated."